Breathe
by Fallen Ark Angel
Summary: Laxus struggles with air. - One-shot.


"I love you."

In the silence that followed his words, Laxus found himself swallowing heavily, sucking down air to replaced what had escaped, during his admission, but the room felt lacking it then. Like all the air had been sucked from it by something else, before he got a chance at it.

Someone else, maybe.

Her.

Mirajane.

She took a deep breath too, at his words, he could see it, he could see her, only her, and her eyes were so blue and big and round and perfect and he wanted to stay like then, he had to stay like this, how could he not stay like this just forever, but if more air wasn't supplied into the room soon, then he'd have to belly crawl out,, get away from here, to wherever the oxygen had been pumped instead.

He didn't think that they'd end up there that night.

Back at his place.

They never had before. It wasn't exactly somewhere he liked to take women. Or anyone, really. Not even himself. His apartment in Magnolia felt cold and sterile. A crash pad, mostly, for the in-between days when he wasn't out and about, discovering and adventuring in the great expanse of Fiore. Bickslow and Freed hung around, sometimes, if they were between places themselves, and once, when he was just feeling real low on himself, Laxus hunkered down there for a good two months, hardly leaving at all, discovering and adventuring into himself for once, rather than every other facet of the world.

But he was here.

Now.

With Mirajane Strauss.

It felt like a dream. A strange, hazy one, but one he was having. He had to be having. Yes, he had to be having a dream because there was no way that he would want to take her there. To his place. That he'd even be with her, really, truly.

But he had been with her, recently, sort of. They'd been dating, if you could call it dating, to go out with one another the few times a year he was around, but who would call it that? Was he going to call it that now? What else could you call it? When you were home more often now, than you usually were, because you actually wanted to go out to dinner with a woman, one specific woman, and only that woman, when eating dinner with every other woman felt off and wrong. Because other women weren't sharp and funny and witty and, even if they were, definitely didn't hide it so perfectly behind the coy deniability of innocence, and even if they did that as well, they just didn't have the striking blue eyes that could pierce steel.

And they pierced him, then, that night as he stared down into them, somewhat uncomfortable, maybe, with the way they were laying now, but he couldn't dream of moving. Mainly because this was a dream, right? Wasn't it? And he couldn't have a dream within a dream, could he?

Nothing about it felt like a dream though, then, as Mirajane reached up with a sly smile, her soft flesh brushing against the course stubble of his beard and he didn't think that he meant it, at first. What had just slipped out. What had been said. Who could hold it against him? It was a common mishap and he had to figure that Mirajane knew it well.

He did mean it though.

Hadn't he?

With a bow of his head, he found air there then, in her neck, and Mirajane let out something of a laugh, maybe, in response. A giggle. Yes. A giggle. He liked it when she giggled. She'd done it that night, as they were walking around the park, and he took to grumbling under his breath, just a bit, about the cold, and she thought it was so funny, when he grumbled at things. And he found that he had a lot of things to grumble about, in those days, as he refused to express his anger in his formally natural way; pounding together the heads of every lowly mage he ran across. Now he was supposed to be more mature and a better person and he just had to get it out sometimes. He found it best in short, soft spurts that most everyone ignored, but Mirajane noticed.

She noticed a lot of things about him.

He was sure she noticed that it was the way that one of her hands came up to snake around his neck, tickling at his golden locks that cause him to moan lowly against her own, bringing him to his weakness, and he liked being around her.

He always kind of had. Maybe. When they were young. She wasn't as bad, at least, as all the other shitty others who populated the bar, but it was different now. It had been different for awhile, it felt like. Mira made him feel more than anyone else in his life. Comforted and content, but also conflicted, somehow. Because it was complex and confusing, what they were edging into, and he was somewhat concerned, but at the same time…

Everything just felt right.

More than it felt comforting, content, conflicted, complex, confusing, or concerning, it ust felt right.

Right?

Right, he decided as the second his chest deflated, letting another of those precious breaths out, her seemed to rise, taking in the air, stealing it, almost, she had to be, it was the only answer, wasn't it, to why he was feeling so light headed?

Sometimes, well, a lot of the times, when he was being a big showboat down at the hall, or even when he was silently seething in a corner, the things running through his mind were strings of insults aimed at those in his general vicinity. It might seem this way, given his propensity for them, but it was far from the case. Typically, honestly, the only thing he was doing was continually shitting on himself, on his actions as well as his thoughts, replaying them all over and over again endlessly, convinced he could fix each and every incorrect happenstance he befell.

Because it was always him. Always about him. All of his insults, both veiled and full barbed, were only thinly masked deflections over his own lack of confidence. It was terrifying, it always was for him, to feel as if he were the most powerful person in the room, the most intellectual and proficient, but also unable to escape the resounding internal consensus that he sucked. Was an awful person. And no amount of doing the right thing, correcting his misdeeds, being certain not to make the same mistakes, would ever wash away what he'd already done, all the wrong he'd already wrought.

But Mirajane helped him, at least a little bit, to not focus so much on those things. The things that twisted about in his mind so continuously and distracted him, kept him company, whether he was around others or not. Because Mirajane had this thing about her, recently, for awhile now, where just being in her presence turned his entire mind to mush and he couldn't get so down on himself, feel so bad about getting so down on himself, because he was barely even able to remember how to breathe around the woman, much less detest every aspect of his life.

Mira made it hard to exist.

Not in the same way that all of his past mistakes and shortcomings did, but rather in this strange, bizarre method of capture not only all of his attention, but all of his senses as well. He felt like he was falling, not for her, but for a concept, a feeling, a state of being that he'd never reached before.

Was this euphoria?

Or something worse?

Something all consuming and unrelenting that only served to leave him hamstrung and breathless. He thought that it didn't have a word for it, he'd never needed a word for it, but it just found its way out of him, in that moment, along with all the air she was taking from him, she had to be taking from him, and he was weak, not powerful, he was stupid, so far from an intellectual, but he was wise enough, strong enough to admit defeat.

And if it was a never-ending battle, something he'd put up a struggle against, that he'd rejected, so many times before, he was throwing in the towel now and he knew, oh, for certain, he knew.

"Mmmm," Mirajane hummed as he fell away then, away from her, to shut his eyes tightly so he didn't have to count the cracks in his ceiling, relishing instead as the deep gasping breaths were accepted much easier now, on his back, as his lungs weren't crying out so much. Softly, over the sound of his panting, the woman whispered her own agreement as she shifted closer to him still. "I love you too."


End file.
